


all the toy soldiers winding down

by portions_forfox



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-22
Updated: 2012-07-22
Packaged: 2017-11-10 12:38:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 681
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/466365
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/portions_forfox/pseuds/portions_forfox
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Angelina, Angelina, you're in love with the wrong brother.</p>
            </blockquote>





	all the toy soldiers winding down

**Author's Note:**

  * For [galfridian](https://archiveofourown.org/users/galfridian/gifts).



> Written for the prompt at ' [welcome home ficathon](http://kolms.livejournal.com/19212.html):  _ **angelina johnson** , step away from the window, go back to sleep, safe from pain and truth and choice_

It's been years since she kicked up dust with the soles of these feet, since these fingernails drew blood. It's been years since her fighting days, if that's what you call them, if that's what they were. They were.   
  
Those days stretched out bold across the years, through a battle, yes, but more than just that. She was born a soldier, born to fight, and there were times she lived for it. There were times where the wind would whip through her hair, cut sharp against her cheeks, rattle at her bones and she reined in the clouds and she would think,  _This is my battleground, and these are my friends_. Even Ron, if she was feeling generous. It was never just a game to her - she used to sink her teeth into being alive.   
  
It's not like that anymore. She's tired, and people have died.

 

 

 

(She danced with Fred once, lights blinking above their heads like tiny silver stars, and she laughed so hard that night her stomach hurt in the morning. He kept dipping her before she expected, so low her hair brushed the ground and breath caught in her throat, but he would always catch her before she hit her head. With Fred it's okay to mildly injure the subject on behalf of the joke, except when it's Angelina.  
  
"He likes you, you know," George told her on a moment aside, because George was always a little bit better at that sort of thing. Angelina turned her head, breathing heavy and cheeks flushed red, and laughed, "He's only joking, George."  
  
George shrugged, set down his pumpkin juice and spun back out to dance again. "It's the only way he knows how," he said, and Angie, she believed him.)

 

 

 

There were a lot of things that weren't supposed to happen.  
  
Like - the six of them out on the grass, and warm sun on her calves and Katie pressed into her shoulder and Lee picking blades of grass and dumping them in Alicia's hair, and Fred abnormally quiet, smiley, and looking at her and not really trying to hide it, and leaning across the circle and kissing her on the lips.  
  
"Oi!" she shouted as soon as she'd pushed him away. "What the hell d'you think you're doing!" But it was far too late because now she was blushing, which meant Katie and Alicia and Lee started cat-calling, and Fred said, "Methinks the lady doth protest too much," grinning, stupid, stupid, grinning.  
  
And she wasn't supposed to lag behind on their way back for dinner, and expect him to do the same, and let her hand dangle so that he could grab it, swing it back and forth and look up at the sky like he belonged here.  
  
It wasn't supposed to be such a beautiful day. She wasn't supposed to stop and kiss him in the grass, smiling despite herself into his curling lips.  
  
They weren't supposed to leave her.  
  
Fred wasn't supposed to still owl her, and still come around, and still fuck her like that first time in the empty classroom with the door wide open and his mouth agape, and she wasn't supposed to love him back, the git, and George wasn't supposed to like her quite as much as he did.

 

 

 

She leaves Hogwarts with war snapping near at her ankles, and in that moment she is still brave.  
  
The next time she sees it, there are children lying dead beneath fallen hoards of stone, and blood on the grass where Fred kissed her, and blood on the lips with which he did.  
  
("He likes you, you know," Percy tells her in the rubble of the war they've won, and she looks over at George and thinks how very like his brother he can be.)

 

 

 

George wants to name the baby Fred, and it makes sense, in an ironic, twisted sort of way. It makes sense.  
  
He'll be a fighter like his uncle, like his mother used to be.

 

 

 

Angelina, Angelina, you're in love with the wrong brother.  
  
You're in love with the dead one.


End file.
